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Short recap: 1. Sanada walked out on Naito during their usual post match fist bump ceremony due to both being in the same G1 block. 2. White continues to torment Juice. 3. Jr. heavyweight title match got similar intro to heavyweight title match where all previous champs are shown. It was shorter (if I'm not mistaken heavyweight title shows each champion separately while here they showed 4 at a time), but it was pleasant surprise. 4. I liked Hiromu/Desperado from BotSJ more, but this was still great match. Weirdly enough highlight to me was how casually Desperado put his mask back on after Hiromu pulled it and didn't even pretend to hide his face. Its like I don't give a shit about anything, but beating you. I think he wasn't even phased for a second once he got his mask pulled. 5. If I got it right Dragon Less is next.

Gonna quote myself: I'm a bit baffled by them doing another Okada/Tanahashi so soon. Okada needs something new, instead he gets paired against Tanahashi again who despite his age and lower status in terms of kayfabe will always be more liked by the audience. Its like despite all the record breaking and other accolades Okada still can't move past him while Naito and Omega (and Ibushi to certain extent) are moving on. I hope that at least it won't be a semi-final match with Okada once again beating former ace, yet still not being able to move past him. Okada looks very obvious winner of A Block. So obvious that you almost expect something weird to happen. I think we shouldn't probably write out Elgin and Evil. Elgin despite all his problems continues to get strong booking so I wouldn't write him off either. Evil got upcoming Jericho match and had strong G1 last year, he also has history with Okada in G1 with being first man to drop him once his legendary title run started. Block B on the other hand looks crazy. My insane prediction for whole thing: Okada wins finals against Ibushi. Naito beats Omega here and at KoPW to take the belt. WK rematch with sides switched.

Yeah, I kinda hope that we won't get obvious outcome with him winning G1 since it would immediately brush that aside. On other hand when he got in the ring with Tanahashi my first reaction was "they aren't done, are they?" and I'm ready for him to move up something else.

I think that if WWE offered him a deal like Lesnar has then he'd sign, but will they? As for NJPW, he defeated Okada and has the title now. You could say that he has achieved everything he can and might want to challenge himself in different environment after dropping the title back to Okada at WK. I think that speaks volumes about WWE main event scene.

From what I have seen people don't rate those Cody matches very highly. I mean, sure, those are probably best Cody's matches, but for Okada and Ibushi? Probably doesn't make top 50 for each man.

I ended up liking Elgin/Goto more than I expected and it was much better, in my opinion, than Elgin/Ishii that we got earlier in the year. Weird that Elgin got the win at Dominion and now lost to Goto. I half wonder if Elgin didn't win simply so that Omega could talk about how gaijins are totally dominating NJPW. Either way he is going to have strong G1 most likely since usually people drop lower tier belts so that they could be presented as credible potential winners. Interference in the middle was weird and I suppose whole point was to remind that Taichi is still there and Cobb is alive too. Next is Cobb, but I'm a bit whatever on that since in my unpopular opinion Cobb is inferior to Elgin in very way (well obvious exception being that he is not an asshole, or at least we are not aware of that, yet) so I'm already ready for Goto/Taichi singles, probably at Destruction shows.

So Nagata and Kojima out, White and Page in. Objectively weaker G1 field than previous one. I hope that at least blocks will provide some interesting match ups like Omega/Tanahashi. And yeah, no Taichi killed my hype a bit.

Doesn't look very exciting to be honest. Sure, main event should deliver, but other than that nothing very interesting. UK shows look more promising.

Saw on twitter that it won't be streamed, but there will be VoD available in 48 hours with Kevin Kelly on commentary.

Decent enough way to stop Cage without him losing much if any momentum and now he can be occupied for few more matches without going for eventual title win.

I don't follow WWE much outside of few select matches and BREAKINGS NEWS type of stuff so excuse me for my ignorance, but are New Day guys even relevant anymore? Whenever I see them mentioned now it usually is in the context of Omega and YBs coming to WWE or them doing some sort of crossover. In other words I think it would be a bad deal, but I admit that I'm totally uninformed on the subject.

Puroresudream has uploaded Dragonmania XIII if anyone cares for such things. It features few guys from AJPW and Ultimo Dragon obviously.

Yeah, not sure why Zack is a question here. He signed a deal with NJPW after his NJ Cup win so it would be very weird if ends up not participating in G1. Besides, Naito needs his win back.

I think you are thinking a bit too much about it. Osaka tends to boo Naito whenever he does something heelish and cheer when he plays fair. Last year when he was against Tanahashi it was a roller coaster of emotions. So I suppose Osaka wants Naito to be an asshole that plays fair.

I think that Taichi can do both. Nobody will be shocked if he low blows and roll ups someone 3 minutes into the match nor will they be surprised if he will go for full match like he did against Naito and Tanahashi. In that way I think he is superior to Yano since his longer matches tend to drag .

I think this is very difficult topic for lots of people due to whole equality and slavery thing. Once someone makes an argument that maybe some things should be kept separate for them to work better we automatically get counter arguments about inequality and segregation. And I think this is coming more from emotional than reasonable side. Reality is this: 1. Every promotion that had/has men and women divisions has produced lots and lots of terrible stuff with women. Very rarely do we actually get something above average from these women divisions. 2. Joshi promotions have produced lots of great stuff with women. 3. Major USA promotions trying to do both divisions are probably directly responsible for Joshi equivalent not existing in USA (or the west in general) which in turn results in women wrestling being, for all intents and purposes, dead in USA. And sure, WWE now got Ronda and they try to cash in on her, but if she is gone (or her popularity wanes) then whole division will again be relegated back to piss break status. By being dead I mean it in general, nobody really knows nor talks about any upcoming women wrestlers in USA unless they work in some Joshi promotion. Every promotion has some sort of hierarchy. You got your main belt, you got your tag belts, you got your secondary belt. As a result it is easier to book matches and develop storylines since you know what on paper should matter and what should matter less. So take for example recent Dominion card. You ain't going to place women match above any of the top four matches for obvious reasons. So you'll place women match somewhere in the middle. Which you might think sounds good enough and "progressive", but reality is that these women would probably be able to main event a Joshi show and get whole show built around them instead of being a filler. And I wrote a bit about it in Dominion thread, how Hiromu/Ospreay to me didn't feel as big as Hiromu/Ishimori despite it happening on much bigger show. And the reason for that is that while BotSJ finals happened in much smaller arena, it was their show, they ended the show and they got twice as much time. But wait, what if those women were really good and popular, why wouldn't you place them above those matches? Well because most of the time promotions are building towards singular goal - heavyweight title. Wrestlers are either challenging for it or are being built up for that, or they are there to put other guys over who'll challenge for it. To build up women division in same manner you'd have to dedicate same amount of time/resources and you don't have infinite amount of time/resources available so you'll prioritize one over another and thats how you end up with piss break division. But what does it matter, they'll surely get better pay in NJPW than in small Joshi promotion. Yeah, what does it matter, everyone should just sign with WWE since it pays better.

Baretta wasn't in it, he moved to heavyweights like 2 weeks after G1 blocks were announced so it was kind of a missed opportunity.

Didn't see a topic for this upcoming tour. Its status is a bit questionable since it looks like Revolution Pro is doing most of the groundwork and it is not entirely clear if it will even be streamed on NJPW World or if we will be getting VoD at later date, but some of the match ups have some interesting implications for NJPW in general so it probably is worth talking about it. Shamelessly stealing the card information that someone else did: Milton Keynes - Night 1 - RPW British Tag Team Championship: Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii - WALTER vs. Yuji Nagata - Will Ospreay vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru - YOSHI-HASHI vs. Chris Brookes - David Starr vs. Tiger Mask - Bullet Club (Isihimori & Yujiro) vs. Aussie Open - SuzukiGUN (Taichi, Desperado, & Iizuka) vs. CHAOS (Switchblade, Yano, & Gedo) - Shota Umino vs. ???? Manchester - Night 2 - RPW British Heavyweight Championship: Tomohiro Ishii (c) vs. Minoru Suzuki - Kazuchika Okada vs. Zack Sabre Jr. - Will Ospreay vs. Taichi - Jay White vs. Chris Brookes - WALTER vs. Yujiro Takahashi - David Starr vs. Tiger Mask vs. El Phantasmo vs. Taiji Ishimori - SuzukiGUN (Desperado, Kanemaru, & Iizuka) vs. CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI, Yano, & Gedo) - Yuji Nagata vs. Shota Umino - Danny Duggan vs. ???? So, interesting things to note: 1. Umino traveling to UK sounds like he is going on excursion and this will be his send off. Duggan is from LA dojo, maybe not going anywhere, but NJPW feels like showcasing work that is being done in the dojo. Both will be facing same mystery opponent. Some are speculating that this might be Tanahashi since he is not booked anywhere else, but time will tell. 2. Taichi vs Ospreay is a weird match. This might hint at Ospreay going to heavyweights if he wins, but I think it probably is likely that Ospreay picks up a win on first night and loses to Taichi due to cheating. 3. Walter in NJPW. Match with Nagata should be awesome, match with Yujiro probably should be a squash. Will be interesting to see if this is going to be one time deal or are they working out some deal with Walter. I feel like he would be a big get if they managed to lock him down for a year or two. 4. Ishimori is placed in weird matches. RevPro twitter talked about maybe making 4-way for their cruiserweights title that Starr is holding so I'm thinking, might Ishimori actually win it? He is coming back to Impact and Impact has talked something about wanting to work with UK promotions so this might be a starting point. 5. Dominion probably made it obvious that Ishii/Suzuki is happening and I expect them to deliver great main event. 6. Okada vs Zack in special singles match. Okada is coming after a big loss and Zack has home advantage. Might we see a surprise win from Zack here? Could build towards G1 match which Okada would obviously win.

Last year War Machine (I think?) were the champs and weren't in it, but Bucks are likely to drop back the belts to Evil/Sanada at Cow Palace anyway. And considering that IC title will be out, maybe more meaning will be given to someone defeating Evil or Sanada? Thats one way to improve the standing of tag belts. I'm not sure if NJPW really wants to do another main event that doesn't feature heavyweight title. Road to WK8 and WK8 itself was a mess that they managed to salvage only due to Naito's new character being able to turn whole thing into a storyline. Doing that again would be risky. I'm also unsure how big Okada/Jericho would really be. Sure, big, but bigger than potential combination of Naito/Omega/Ibushi? I doubt. After all, lets not forget that Okada is less popular than Tanahashi, Naito and Omega (if we look at it in terms of world wide popularity). It is also possible that if Ibushi would be given a G1 victory then he'd soar past Okada as well since now, in my opinion, he is somewhat cold due to people being unsure about his status and G1 win would clarify that. And Jericho should at least have a match with Evil before WK so novelty of Jericho in NJPW will be worn out even further. In other words, I don't see it. To me what keeps Okada in the main event is heavyweight title and his status as the ACE. Remove one and I have problems seeing him in main event. Maybe a loss to Omega will lead to some new places and he'll manage to grow and I'll be proven wrong, but as of now I'm sceptical. As of now to me most obvious scenario is Okada winning G1. Which, taken in mind what I wrote before, is probably a bad call since Okada, in terms of growth, has kinda hit a ceiling with this routine of being the champ or being the challenger. People often respond by saying that business is growing so it is all fine, but realistically speaking most of the growth can probably be attribute to Omega and Naito. Both are generating way more excitement and money than AJ or Nakamura were. Okada's journey to become the ace probably should have ended at WK9, but it was extended to WK10. Yet looking back now, following G1 he got a draw with Tanahashi and it looks like his journey has truly ended only this year in Wrestling Dontaku. He needs a new journey to grow as the wrestler, but winning G1 or main eventing WK just because is not likely to provide that. Yet his status as the ace pushes him into those two scenarios.

Cobb is back, but he is booked in meaningless multiman tag matches. Surely they are planning to do something with here otherwise it feels like a pointless booking.

Well I haven't heard anyone mentioning anything about surge in ticket sales for Cow Palace after these matches were announced. Maybe too early for that or maybe "bigger match in USA" doesn't mean that much. Thou after fast SSE and All In sell outs I'd imagine a big bump, otherwise it would kinda indicate that those shows sold out fast due to various external reasons and not due to The Elite being that big of a draw in the states. But yeah, you explained well why there isn't that much interest in Omega/Cody II. Additionally in latest BTE episode it looked like Cody was ready to mend fences, but was unable to make that first step. So it is kinda whatever. Storylines makes sense I'd say, more or less, but due to how it was built and most likely outcome (nobody wants to leave a group that is making ton of money) it looks like this match will be just a formality to get the gang back and after that we will actually be getting something new and interesting, or at least I hope so since this BC civil war was a bit of a drag. Fale investing in himself is interesting. He has decent booking and few good matches (Tana, Okada) that he can fall back and produce some decent stuff if needed. In a way I guess he is in similar spot that Elgin was before his title win. Either needs to win something bigish or get moved down the card. Tama on the other hand I think is just posting shit hoping to get more attention for himself and maybe get a small push or something.

Couldn't watch it live so I watched the VoD without spoiling myself before it. And after watching it I looked at the reactions online and it feels a bit like I was the odd man out. But lets get a bit more detailed: Special tag matches were what they were. Juice picked up a win, Zack picked up a win and we got hot Ishii/Suzuki tease. And I hated, in a bad way, that Cody picked up a win, maybe it was just me but it felt like crowd died at that moment. I get that we are getting Omega/Cody II, but you have Rey Mysterio having his first match in NJPW and he ends up being like third most important person in his match. Wasn't a fan of that at all. Desperado/Kanemaru retaining was a pleasant surprise. RP3K are still improving and finding their way so it makes sense to keep those titles on evil heels. They also kinda have a match ready with MCMG if NJPW wants to do it. I hated Evil/Sanada vs YBs match. Looking back at with knowledge about what happened next makes me "get it", but I still don't like it. It felt to me like Bushi match when he is faced against less over people and does heel stuff and it produces weird outcomes. Good thing obviously that YBs are more over than Bushi's usual opponents and that Evil/Sanada are better than Bushi. Anyway, here, if I'm not mistaken, at one point Evil goes into headlocks and crowd starts chanting Evil. Then they barely hit any of their "big" moves that pop the crowd and Bucks pretty much controlled the match till Matt got his back fucked and Nick fucked his leg. At that point I started thinking that okay, Evil/Sanada are probably winning so as a "compensation" they are trying to make Bucks looks like super babyfaces. But nope, they ended up winning and I was like "whaaa..?", they just moved up division and defeat champions while both being fucked? Not a fan at all. Speaking about really liking something, Hiromu is champ again. Match was better than their earlier 2 encounters, but it wouldn't make my TOP 3 Hiromu matches in 2018 list. It goes back a bit to what Hiromu said in press conference (and maybe shortly after winning BotSJ) that it is weird that they immediately have a title shot and that maybe BotSJ winner and Jr. champ should stand apart a bit before eventual clash. And well, getting a big win in Dominion is more important than winning BotSJ, but it didn't feel like that. It felt like Hiromu proved himself during BotSJ and here he just took his prize. Thou it is likely that if matches were switched I'd feel different. But then, they probably wouldn't have gotten 34 minutes here. Triple threat had surprising ending, but I'm happy about it, more or less. I remember writing in the past that NJPW has to make a decision about Elgin since he was pretty much frozen after his loss against Suzuki at Destruction show last year. On one hand Elgin has a bad rep, on the other hand I can appreciate company that doesn't throw away its workers once they become uncomfortable. Naito/Jericho was mixed bag for me. Lots of emotions, lots of botches and cheap finish that kinda asks for a rematch, but I really don't want to see it. Meanwhile it looks like Evil will be challenging Jericho for Cow Palace. And people are speculating about how it is probably filler before we get Jericho/Naito II and as I said earlier, I'm not sure if I need to see few more botched Destinos. So I want Evil to win. Last year when Shibata got hurt and Evil defeated Okada in G1 lots of people speculated that Evil probably got Shibata's booking so for me it wouldn't be that surprising if Evil defeats Jericho and gets further elevated. Another issue is that Jerciho won't be in G1 (at least I hope so) and NJPW usually likes to set up challengers for IC/NEVER titles during it so Evil bringing it back would make sense to me. And I'm kinda done with Jericho in NJPW. Match with Omega was also filled with botches, but it had novelty going for it. Match with Naito had less novelty and more botches, maybe not more, but probably more per minutes since WK match was twice as long. On the positive side, Jericho has reinvented himself before so maybe he'll do that again, but if not then thanks, but no. Naito is fully transitioning into Nakamura. Get IC title, lose it before G1 so that people would have hopes that you can win it. And I don't really get it. So years ago you had really popular guy that you put into this corner and eventually he left your company because he realized that he hit his ceiling and couldn't move past it. So what we learned from that is that we take even more popular guy and put him into same situation and, I don't know, hope that he will not decide to also leave? I hope that I'm wrong, but for me early predictions are looking like Naito/Okada G1 finals (two 2 time winners going for third win) and Naito/X at WK for IC title. God I hope it is not going to be a rematch with Jericho. And well, Nakamura acted like IC title was "his" so it made some sense that he would always return to it. Third "I don't care about this title" reign will look really weird. Alternatively Naito could "grow" and accept his role, which would be same as accepting defeat and kill his character. Third option that has been floated around is Naito beating Omega at KoPW and Naito/Okada at WK with Okada breaking the "G1 winner gets pinned in WK" curse. Which again, means that Naito is getting IC title in the first half of the 2019. Dead end either way. And well probably main reason why I'm not very excited is that I found Okada/Omega II too long so when I noticed that main event is about to start and VoD still has like 2 hours left on it I just skipped to the results. Yes I know that it wasn't that long and that VoD had some post-match interviews. Anyway, reading various reactions I can see that it had many things going for it and did many smart things. So I'm happy that it worked for people who cared. And well that sums up whole show for me. I felt like it wasn't for me. Only two things that I really end up caring about were Hiromu's win and NJPW finally doing something with Elgin, which says a fucking lot. Another somewhat unrelated note, I think that Chaos lost all their matches. Maybe some shake-up is going to happen? They could use one.

I'm thining about trying to watch some MLW. Are Fusion episodes good place to start or should I start somewhere else so that I don't end up missing some cool story moments or whatever else?

People already picking apart this reasoning and pointing out how before he never had problems with people doing dangerous stuff.